Hello and welcome to Gardening with Ben, the award winning gardening podcast as voted
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Ben. Hello, and welcome to Gardening with Ben, the show where we
dig deep into the world of gardening and allotments. As the year comes to
a close, it's the perfect time to reflect on our gardening journey. Today
will reminisce about the seats of knowledge we've planted, the challenge we've weathered,
and the bountiful harvest we've enjoyed. From the first sprouts off spring to the
last leaves of autumn, We've nurtured our gardens and in turn, they've nurtured
us. So grab your favorite gardening gloves settle in. Let's explore the growth,
the learning, and the joy this year has brought to our green spaces.
This is gardening with Ben, where every day is a good day to
grow. So that is it. It's the thirty first of December. It's
the end of the year now, and as our year draws to an end,
I'd just like to thank everybody that does support me through all of my
social media platforms, through Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and these podcasts. However,
when I've looked at how many podcasts I've recorded this year, I have
recorded very little and I do apologize for that because I do like to keep
the podcast going and I've done a rubbish job this year, so I do
only apologize for that. But we're planning on doing some good ones this year,
so make sure you do hit that subscribe button and we keep you up
to date with all our podcasts. And also I have had twenty two thousand
downloads this year, so you can't say it's not doing bad. Still,
people are still listening to the podcast, so thank you to everybody that does
listen to them. And if he new here, make sure you do give
my Instagram a follow and drop me a message and let me know that you're
listening to this podcast, as I do like to hear from the people that
listen to them. And yeah, so this episode is called reflecting on a
year in gardening and what a year we have had at the plot and it's
not been a good year. Honestly, it's not been a brilliant year whatsoever.
Down the allotment and the reason why that goes to happen is because I've
not put as much effort in as I would like to have done. One
of the main reasons for this goes down to not having my shed to grow
my seeds in this year. As like I said, my shed collapsed last
year the end of winter and I didn't manage to get rebuilt in time ready
for the springtime, and so I didn't have anywhere to grow all my seeds
in, which is the main big factor in growing stuff on my plot,
as obviously I've got my polytunnel. But when I grow stuff on the ground
in the polytunnel, all the rats come in, the all the seeds,
all the squirrels come in, and the mice and everything, and they just
nibble at them, whereas if they're in my shed. They're on the shelving
out of the way where the rats can't get hold of them. So that
was one of the main factors why I didn't managed to grow much stuff this
year, because I didn't have an area to start all the seeds off growing.
So one of the things I had to do was by plants that i'd
already started from hot garden centers and shops. But obviously they're expensive, so
I didn't get to buy and purchase many at those. But the ones that
I did purchase did grow well. We got some good lettuce, we've got
some good beetroot growing, and yeah, we got some decent results from the
stuff that we did grow. But I didn't manage to grow much at all
this year in them terms. But on the fruit side of things, I
did manage to grow quite a lot. We've got a lot of fruit growing
down at the plot as obviously, I've got my fruit trees growing with all
them fruits. I've got my apple, I've got my plums, I've got
my pears, we've got a strawberries, we've got blackberries, we've got some
raspberries, and they did absolutely fantastic. The amount of pears I had this
year, and the apples I did absolutely fantastic. I didn't get many cooking
apples this year, but hopefully, fingers crossed, we do get a lot
of cooking apples next year. But we have given the trees a massive chop
back because they were getting too tall. So we'll see. We'll see if
we managed to get some. Fingers crossed we do, even if we get
about ten to fifteen, I'll be happy with that. It'll make me plenty
of apple crumbles this week. I don't do the cooking. I always give
the apples to my mum and the rhubarb, and she does all my cooking
for me, which you don't mind. She likes making them so and I
just stick them in my freezer and then eat them with hot custard as you
would do. So yeah, that's what we've done with the food this year,
and fingers crossed, we do get a lot of stuff growing next year.
I've got a lot of big plans for down at my plot. I
want to get back into it. This last year, I've not done much
down there at all. This year. I didn't grow any pumpkins, I
didn't get any cor shets growing. I didn't get no marrows growing. I
didn't have no squash growing. Oh, I had sweet corn. We did
fantastic with the sweet corn. The sweet corn was absolutely fantastic. And also
now I've got an air fire at home, so I cooked my sweet corn
in the airfy and wow, did it taste phenomenal or what? It was
absolutely delicious. The sweet corn was beautiful and I'll definitely be growing a lot
more sweet corn again next year. Sweet Corn is one of the things that
I always do plan on growing, and we have a lot of trouble with
whirls down at the allotment. And one of the tips that I always give
out for the sweet corn is that when it's getting ready is to put plastic
bottles over the tops of the corn to stop the rats and squirrels from eating
them. And that gave me one hundred percent success rate of none of them
getting eaten by animals. Other people on the plot had their stripped, they
had them eaten, they had them knowed away and stuff like that, whereas
all mine all grew fantastic and we had a fantastic crop outcome. So if
you have any squirrels or rat issues, put a bottle over the top of
the corn when they nearly ready, and you will protect them because the students
start to smell ready, the rats and the squirrels will come along and eat
them all. And even if you think I order it tomorrow, they I've
done that before and next day they've all been stripped and I've lost every sweet
corn cob soever. So yeah, that is my sweet corn. That was
fantastic, absolutely, So we want to get back to growing more stuff again
next year, so I'll talk about that in my next episode my plans for
next year, so make sure you stay tuned for that one. Hopefully that
one will be coming tomorrow. Hopefully we'll get recorded for you to listen to.
As I say, I'm going to start getting these podcasts published quite regularly
again and get them back out for you to listen to, because I do
know people do miss them and they do like them. I'm surprised how much
people do like me waffling on and talking to you all about People enjoy it
while they're gardening. So overall the last year has been absolutely rubbished down at
my Apart from fruit, which was absolutely fantastic, I have got some issues
from my polytunnel. We might have to replace the skin. I keep taping
it up, keep taping it up, but the tape keeps coming off again
when it gets really windy. And we're getting a lot of storms at the
moment, and there's some mass storms on the way, so we've got to
be prepared for them. But fingers crossed, we do get some good stuff
growing in the polytunnel. I'm going to be growing with to marts again next
year. Yes, I forgot to mens much Martars. My tomates did fantastic
this year. I keep thinking of different things as I'm talking, but what
we did with is tomatoes this year. Rather than buy the actual seats in
the packets of seats, I thought, I know what, I'm going to
go to the supermarket. I've seen it all over social media, people going
to the supermarket starting the seeds off from tomatoes and getting fantastic crops. Whether
it was just a clickbait thing, I don't know, but I tried.
I got some punnet of mixed small tomatoes through a yellow, orange and red
like cherry sized ones, and I'd seen rather than dry them out, just
scoop the seeds straight out, put them in the soil and let them grow
so that's what I did, and if by magic all of the seeds grew,
I got absolutely tons of plants grown from the seed. They did fantastic,
They grew really well, and the yellow ones tasted absolutely beautiful. So
if you wanted to grow some tomatoes next year, go to Tesculars and get
the multi pack of different variety of tomatoes they like the plumb ones, the
yellow ones, the orange ones, and the red cherry ones, and just
use some of them and scoop them out into some soil and start them growing.
And I grew them all outside and didn't grown in the polytunnel because my
polytunnel out of action last year. We grew them all outside and we had
some fantastic results for them. They were just amazing, absolutely amazing. So
I'm sticking to that trick next year. I might even try it with peppers.
Rather than buying seeds from the soup from the shops for the peppers,
I'm just going to buy pepper and scoop the seeds out and try it that
way, because you get more seeds in a pepper than you do in a
packet of seeds, which are more expensive. So we're going to try that
so make sure you stay tuned fat and see how we get on. It's
a lot cheaper buying the vegetable and taking the seeds out and doing it that
way rather than actually buying the seed packets of seeds sometimes, so make sure
you have a look and give that a try and see what you can do.
See if if you can get stuff growing from seeds from the actual plants
in the supermarkets. I don't know if I try it with cucumbers or not.
I grew a market more variety of cucumbers rather than the telegraph ones usually,
and they don't have the market more ones in the supermarkets, so we'll
give them a missed probably. But yeah, I'm going to try a few
different things from the supermarket, take the seeds out and try growing them from
them, So make sure you stay tuned for that. And hopefully we're going
to try some different varieties of stuff next year as well. So like I
said, stay tuned for the next episode and we'll talk about that more in
detail. I do need to get a seed catalog for to have a look
at some things to try and grow, so make sure you click that subscribe
button and then you'll get notified when new episodes come up, and yeah,
thank you for tuning back again. I'm glad to be back doing these podcasts.
I think we've had more podcasts the last few days that we have over
the year. But yeah, let's try and get a lot of episodes out
next year. Let's try and get this podcast channel back up and munny to
how it used to be. And I know people used to love it.
And I've got a new app now to give me ideas on suggestions for podcast
ideas and stuff like that, which I've been using and I've been using it
throughout the beginning bit of the podcast, if you've enjoyed that entrance but when
I'm talking about the introduction. But yeah, hopefully we're going to get this
podcast booming and lots of listeners in So if you've enjoyed it, please do
click that subscribe button, send me a message on Instagram, and stay tuned.
And until next time, remember keep smiling, keep shining, and keep
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